Because user experience is an important consideration with Long Term Evolution (LTE), user equipment (UE) testing is extremely important. While LTE is considered as cutting edge in terms of speed and network performance, any degradation of the performance over the uplink and/or downlink between the infrastructure and the UE may tarnish the user's experience.
To match the demanding requirements of LTE wireless devices, it is important to break the design down into subsystems and to build a test plan that allows each part of the design to be characterized thoroughly before testing the complete device. Without this modular approach, the diagnosis of problems may occur so late in the program that it becomes difficult to manage the final release stages, including field trials and compliance testing.
Moreover, effective and expeditious testing of wireless devices supporting future development of wireless technology (e.g., 5th generation (5G) wireless systems) becomes even more important to insure a desired user experience.